Improvement in lightning-rods



REYBURN & MARTIN.

Lightning Rod. No. 94,773. Patented Sept. I4 1869.

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Letters Patent N 94,773, dated September 14, 1869.

IMPROVEMENT IN LIGHTNING-RODS.

The Schedule referred to in these Letters Patent and making part of the Same.

To all whom. it may concern.-

Be it known that we, \VILLIAM Rurnuas and F. J. MARTIN, of the cit-y and county ofPhiladelphia, and State of Pennsylvania, have invented anew and useful Improvement in Lightning-Rods; and we do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and cxact description of the cons! ruction and operation of the same, reference being bad to the accompanying drawings, making a part of this specification, in which- Figure .l is a plan View of a strip of our wrought material Figure 2 is a transverse section of the rod before twisting; and

Figure 3, a transverse section of the rod, afteitn'ist- This invention consists in making a section of a lightning-rod of one piece of sheet-metal doubled upon itself in ribs in a peculiar manner, whereby a very excellent rod is produced at a very cheap rate,

in the drawings A is a. flat sheet of metal of any species, and of dimensions suited to the manufacture of lightning-ids. Such sheets tin-m the wroughtmaterial that is fed into our machine for making lightning-rods, patented August 17, 1869.

The stages of its transformatimi are shown in figs. 2 and 3. First, four ribs, projecting at right angles from a common centre, each rib beingi'ormed by doubling the sheet upon itself, and each rib supporting all the others, and then a spiral twist, the perfected article being the direct product of the flat sheet A.

So far as we know, no section of lightning-11x1 has ever been made in the manner described, of a single piece ofshect-mctal.

Its advantages are that sheet-metal is the cheapest material which can be obtained for the purpose; that, by reason of the doubling of the sheet in the formation oi the ribs, the rod is made in the form that gives it the greatest possible strength; and that the rod is, at the same time, sulliciently llexible to enable it to be heat as far as necessary, without much trouble in putting it up.

We are aware that there is a rod in the market made by drawing out a. solid bar of copper into a single piece. This form, however, is objectionable, from the fact that a rod cannot be made from bar-metal n .Zll'l y z s cheaply as from sheet-n1etal-not so cheaply by titty per cent, according to our calculation, and that such a rod is in nowisc. flexible, snapping short 011', in fact, under less strain than is required to bend ours, so that it cannot be bent in putting up, without the application of heat to the part requiring flexnrc.

There is also a rod made from sheet metahbut each section is composed of two sheets riveted together, a material so obviously inferior to ours in the matter of cost, that no further notice need be taken of it in this place.

While we do not propose to confine ourselves toany particular metal, yet we shall probably, in actual mam ufiictnrc, use chiefly zinc or copper. As regards zinc, we may say that itcan be wrought up into lightningrods, in the form indicated, at about one-half the ex peuse of iron, and that it possesses about twice the cmnlncting-power. The sheet A, our wrought material, may be quite thin, and yet make a V0! stilf rod, owing to our peculiar manuerot' doubling it upon itself in the libs, which gives the rod all the strength of one drawn out in the same shape and thickness from brumetal, of twice the weight.

This rod has also nlueh more flexibility than the solid onc, as above stated.

Having thus described our invention,

\Vhat we claim as ncw,and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

As an article of nnuiufilcture, a section of lightningrod, made of one piece of sheet-metal doubled upon itself in ribs, substantially in the manner and for the purpose described.

To the above specification of our improvement, we have set our hands, this l'l'th day of August, 1869. WILLIAM S. REYBURN. l". J. MARTIN.

Witnesses:

nus. A. ln'r'rrr, A. M. Taxman. 

